No tears when the world is your onion

Yvonne Thomas on the street-sellers from across the Channel

HERE they come, back again - the Johnnies from Brittany with plaits of onions, garlic and shallots slung over their bicycles, shouting to old friends and dispensing strings of the famous rosé onions from Roscoff as fast as they can. Between September and April - onion season - there is no more welcome sight in the street.

Veg out: Jean Leroux gets to work in central London

The Johnnie Onions are Breton farmers who have been crossing the Channel to sell their onions and shallots on the streets of Britain for 172 years. There was a time between the wars when 1,500 Johnnies covered the country with their bicycles and wheelbarrows, selling between them 9,000 tons of onions in a season. Although only about 30 come over today, business is still pretty brisk.

Every Saturday (barring a few weekends off for home visits), 66-year-old Jean Leroux will be tying his laden bicycle to a lamppost in Ebury Street, central London, hanging his bags on a nearby tree and trading his uncle's famously tender pink onions.

On other days of the week, he can be found in Portobello market, Hampstead, Maida Vale and a few other regular beats, just as he has since 1948, when he was 14 years old.

M Leroux's father was a London-based Johnnie Onions and his patch was Battersea and Nine Elms. His grandfather used to go to Wales with a wooden wheelbarrow of onions, until he was killed there in an accident. He is buried in Pontypridd.

By mid-morning on Saturday, M Leroux's customers are keeping him busy. "Just a minute, I go to get a bit more onions," he says, dashing to replenish his bicycle from a car round the corner.

He is back in a trice, waving to car-drivers who honk in greeting, hailing old friends across the street, hugging a very English-looking old gent and giving him a smacking kiss on the cheek. He is back among friends and on familiar ground.

The onions disappear like snow: £4 a string, weighing about 4 lbs 6oz. M Leroux has more stored in north London near his lodgings and a helper, Réné, who comes over with him from Brittany to plait the onions and garlic into strings.

"I am a farmer," he says. "I work with my uncle on his farm in St-Pol-de-Leon. These are all his onions and garlic, and we have other things, too - artichokes, potatoes and beans.

"Next Saturday, I go home to see my wife Marie, then I am back here until December, and from January to April."

Tradition has it that the early Johnnies came from northern Brittany in fishing boats, sleeping on their onions to prevent the competition stealing them.

It all started in 1828 when Henri Olivier, a 20-year-old Roscovite, put a sack of surplus onions on a fishing boat and sailed over to Plymouth to sell them. It worked so well that others followed and it became a regular trade, father to son, the Johnnies adopting their own areas and prizing their regular customers.

They still go all over the country - to Dorset, Plymouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle, Cardiff and the Welsh valleys, where they are known as Siôni Winwns.

At Roscoff, there is a chapel dedicated to St Barbe, patron saint of "les johnnies" as the onion-sellers are known in Brittany. They took home some English ways, a liking for tea and anglicised names, such as "Piter" M Leroux likes to be known as John.

"They call me Little John," he says. When his father, also John, was here after the Second World War, 140 Johnnies used to cover London in teams and at least 50 would go to Cardiff.

"Now, only about six go to Cardiff," says M Leroux. "My father never went to Wales because I was only three when my grandfather died there."

In telling his tale, M Leroux uses the Breton word for grandfather, tadcu, pronounced tad-kee with the emphasis on the second syllable, which is exactly the same word as the Welsh. M Leroux's native language is Breton and, like other Breton-speakers, he can understand Welsh. But, like other Roscoff Johnnies returning every year, he keeps to the same patch in London.

Here, he gets his tongue around an altogether different lingo. "Yesterday," he says, eyeing a threatening raincloud, "eet was peezing down." And it will probably continue to do so until he leaves for Brittany in April.